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As small-business owners retire, their employees may lose their jobs. New legislation, though, encourages that retiring small-business owners sell to their employees in the form of ESOPs or cooperatives. As Marjorie Kelly, Executive Vice-President and Senior Fellow at the Democracy Collaborative points out, many business owners would prefer to ensure that their employees remain secure.

The Delta Creative Business Challenge granted a local business owner/artist a cash prize with which he can further his business. The contest aimed to begin building community wealth, which builds ownership at the local level to allow individuals to control their own future.

The Green New Deal presents the opportunity to reclaim public ownership of the energy sector in a way that would not only be more cost efficient and equitable but would also protect the environment by incentivizing people over profit.

The Green New Deal bill stands against a daunting task: to produce net zero emissions by 2050. Johanna Bozuwa explains how privately-owned utilities are incentivized only for profit and not to care for the environment.

“So being pushed towards taking climate change seriously and shifting towards renewables… those are all things that are contrary to the investor-owned utility model that makes money specifically off of what they call capital infrastructure and guaranteed rate of return.”

The Fund for Employee Ownership, funded by the Democracy Collaborative, is jumpstarting employee ownership for employees of the Evergreen Cooperative.

Typically it can take many months, even a year or more, to train employees before they’re prepared to purchase a business from its existing owner. The Fund offers to buy-out owners when they’re ready to sell or retire, and then get to the hard work of converting to employee ownership.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to accelerate that process of developing more employee-owners,” Rose says.

The Evergreen Cooperative in Cleveland, OH is featured as an example of the benefits of employee ownership. The Democracy Collaborative's Jessica Bonanno Rose, also a strategy advisor for Evergreen Cooperative, discusses what the goals of the Cooperative are.

Many anchor institutions are also major landowners in their communities, and many are already engaged in housing programs such as employer-assisted housing. Anchor institutions can and should employ CLTs to maximize the impact of their long-term investments in housing for their workforce, and utilize and support CLTs to help build more inclusive communities around their institutions more generally.

In the face of Microsoft's announcement of a large allocation for loans to help middle- and low-income families meet the costs of housing. People working in affordable housing across the country, including John Duda, have called attention to the fact that this is not a long-term solution.

In a discussion of the UK's considerations to nationalize or renationalize many services, a report by Carla Santos Skandier, Research Associate for the Next Systems Project with the Democracy Collaborative, is featured explaining the path that nationalizing fossil fuels might take in the U.S. The deprivatization of the fossil fuels industry is especially important as it would have large effects on climate and environment policy, as well.

Marjorie Kelly is interviewed about the Fifty by Fifty Network, with the goal of reaching 50 million employee-owners by 2050. The aim of this Network is to expand democracy into the workplace in a way that will transform the economy.

The Democracy Collaborative is working with the Health Foundation and the Center for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) to research the role that the National Health Service (NHS) may play as an anchor institution in local communities.